The Aengudaemon Lore

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This is not truly new lore, it is a compilation of established events, "facts" and consistencies in the actions and appearances of aengudaemons. Very little of it is new, and this is more like a Wikipedia article based off what's happened ingame and inlore as opposed to new lore. The aim here is to provide a baseline for aengudaemons to build off of.

An Aengudaemon is a powerful magical entity, above and beyond a shamanic spirit in terms of power and influence. The two primary groups of such creatures are the Aenguls and the Daemons, although truly neutral Aengudaemons such as the Aspects do exist. Aengudaemons are very similar in nature, but the aenguls and daemons tend to be enemies.

All aengudaemons mortals have encountered all seek to influence the world to their own ends. The Aspects seek to make nature flourish and promote harmony, the clerical aengul Tehariel seeks to eradicate the undead and unholy, Metztli seeks to create a master race, Dragur sought to hoard knowledge as a dragon hoards treasure, Iblees sought to destroy the descendants of the Four Brothers and Aeriel sought to prevent Iblees interfering with the passage of the souls of the dead. Any aengudaemon not wishing to interfere with the world in some way is, as you would expect, never seen.

Aengudaemons strongly avoid physically manifesting in the world, usually only doing so when forced or when truly vital. This is because the act of physically manifesting both makes them mortal, vunerable to direct attack and weakens their magical powers to the level of a mortal mage. Manifesting for too long or using magic while manifest risks rendering an aengudaemon so magically weak they lose the ability to “unmanifest” and are trapped in physical form until something happens that shocks them so severely they are able to decorporealise once more. Several aenguls attempted manifest as people in the days of ancient Aegis. The “Aengul Blood” required to create Ascended originates from aenguls which found themselves trapped in mortal form on the physical plane and bred with mortals.

When not physically manifest, aengudaemons can access their full power and cannot be killed by mortals, but their ability to directly influence the world is very weak. Fortunately, all aengudaemons are competent with illusion and mental magics, their minds being far more powerful than those of mortals. Aengudaemons can appear as incorporeal illusory avatars, communicate through dreams, or communicate with mortals in almost any way they choose. While an aengudaemon can communicate with a follower with which they have a magic connection with ease, communicating with other mortals can be quite taxing.

Because their ability to influence the world directly is so weak, Aengudaemons work by proxy: they act through followers. They build cults or orders of followers with which to further their goals and thwart the goals of their enemies. While in truth they are not innately good or evil, daemons are seen as evil by the Descendant Races and thus have a tendency to align themselves with isolationists, outcasts, "evil" groups or any other group that is separate from or shunned by most of mortal civilisation as they are. Likewise, while generally trusted and viewed as innately good by most of civilisation, there are aenguls that coldly focus on achieving their goals at any cost.

One of the most potent powers of any aengudaemon is form a magical connection to their followers, allowing them followers, to draw on its magical power. This grants the followers magical powers akin to an arcane mage which are not hampered by the impermenant nature of arcane magic. However, drawing on too much power too soon can overwhelm, physically harm or even kill a user of aengudaemonic magic. Thus, like an arcane mage, an aengudaemonic mage must learn to control their magic before growing more powerful. Forging the initial connection usually requires the help of the aengudaemon or more commonly powerful mages of the order or cult, and thus to gain an aengudaemon’s magic one must share the motives and goals of the aengudaemon and their followers.

When manifest, an aengudaemon is akin to a powerful mage in magical power, even though it can only use a fraction of its true power and whenever it does it risks temporarily binding itself to the physical world. When unmanifested, an aengudaemon can channel its power through several followers, resulting in several powerful mages and no risk of harm to the aengudaemon itself. Aengudaemons work via proxy because it is both far more effective, far more efficient, and because the risk to the aengudaemon itself is practically none. Because of this, the colder and less empathic aengudaemons may view the world as little more than a game: the death of a pawn is a setback, not a tragedy.

Once an aengudaemon has allowed a mortal mage to draw on their power, they can no longer stop them from doing so. If one of their followers goes renegade and continues to use the aengudaemon’s magic, the aengudaemon will send their loyal followers to hunt them down and use severing magics (usually known only to the highest mages of the order or cult) to cut the rogue off from the aengudaemon. The only other way to sever the connection is to remove the aengudaemon from the world, as was the case with Aeriel and Iblees at the end of the Undead War.

Aengudaemons themselves do have a fair few powers. In addition to wielding all the magics they are capable of granting, they have the power to alter living creatures. However, they have very little control over that power and thus its use requires continued experimentation: often, it is trial and error. Dragur created the Dragaar from dragons and Metztli created the Kharajyr from ocelots (and something else), but there were many failures along the way. It is possible that Nemiisae used this power to make her loyal followers (those who became the Mori) more spiderlike, and it is also possible that an uncontrolled and destructive use of this ability is how Iblees cursed the descendant races.

((The one critical thing to remember when incorporating an aengudaemon into lore or RP is the aengudaemon has a goal and it gathers followers for one reason: to help it towards that goal. Aengudaemonic guilds are formed when the aengudaemon and the guild's goals align. People do not have personal or guild aengudaemons dedicated to their advancement, it is either an alliance or the other way around. When attaching an aengudaemon to a player or guild, the aengudaemon needs a reason to do so: it must further their goals. For an aengudaemon, followers are a means, not an end.))